By Phil Jarratt
Lars Olof Winberg, proud Swedish adventurer, entrepreneur, innovator, environmentalist, jazz lover and Munna Point resident passed away peacefully in Launceston on 5 April, just two weeks short of his 88th birthday.
How Lars would have been annoyed about that – he loved a celebration. But he did live long enough to see his sister turn 100, meet new grandson Magnus and say goodbye to his beloved little dog, Duke, for which hospital staff wheeled his bed onto an outside terrace for a final pat and a cuddle. He died with his family at his bedside, led by his partner of 40 years, Jenny Cusick and children Leif and Eva.
Born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1935, the son of a policeman whose duties included guard duty at the royal palace, Lars’s earliest memories were of being allowed to gaze dreamily at the crown jewels, a practice he continued one way or another all of his life. Lars always saw the positives, even when confined to a wheelchair. As friends and family recalled at a celebration of his life in Launceston last week, late in life when asked how he was, his response was always, “Shit but good.”
Growing up in Sweden a keen skier, bushwalker and motocross enthusiast, he was only average at school, but compulsory military service with the engineering corps ignited a lifelong fascination with engineering and construction, and after completing his service he studied at night for his engineering degree while working by day to support a wife and young family.
After graduation Lars worked with a team of cutting-edge scientists doing research on nuclear magnetic resonance at Stockholm’s Royal Institute of Technology, but the years of working and studying around the clock had taken a toll on the marriage, and in 1968 he migrated alone to Australia, where he worked for large mining companies and, his favourite, flew light aircraft reconnaissance missions for mineral exploration companies such as Western Mining.
Back in Sydney working as a national sales manager for a tech company, Lars accepted a dare from a friend to attend a Linnea Swedish folk dancing club. “The last thing I could ever have imagined doing,” he told me in 2020, “but sometimes unexpected things happen.” He danced with Newcastle-born high school teacher Jenny Cusick, who had recently returned from a year living in Sweden, and wanted to retain her command of the language. Soon she was commanding Lars as well.
Through his membership of the Cooma Ski Club, where he indulged his passion for skiing and orienteering, Lars had become friendly with the remarkable businessman, conservationist and adventurer Frank “Paddy” Pallin, whose chain of outdoors stores had become a phenomenon. Lars was asked to consider starting a franchised store, and was offered either Brisbane or Launceston. He chose Launceston.
Paddy Pallin Launceston was hard work but successful, and when the couple realised that tourists were renting mountain gear from them, then jumping on a Mountain Stage Lines bus, they bought the company and Lars started driving customers up the treacherous Jacob’s Ladder switchback to the snow, loving every minute. When the wildly successful World Expeditions withdrew from its Tasmanian operations, Lars and Jenny bought the business, changed the name to Tasmanian Expeditions and folded the bus company into it.
Shortly after making the final of the 1992 Veteran World Cup of Orienteering in Tasmania Lars was skiing at Ben Lomond with their six-year-old daughter Eva when he was astonished to find that his left foot would not follow the command from his brain. Then he lost control while rock-hopping during an orienteering course. He was diagnosed with peripheral neuropathy. “It’s a very slowly deteriorating condition in which the nerves are gradually dying, giving him less control over his limbs,” Jenny explained.
Lars shrugged and smiled: “They don’t know why I got it and they don’t know how to fix it. When the nerves die the muscles die. But I have no pain.” But for the past decade he has had a fast-moving Luggie mobility scooter, a source of endless fascination to children who watch him hurtle along the Noosa riverfront.
When World Expeditions made the couple an offer they couldn’t refuse to buy back the Tasmanian operation, Lars and Jenny decided to make their Noosa winter escapes more permanent, buying a riverside townhouse at Munna Point. Lars should have been ready to retire, but always on the lookout for a business opportunity, he had noticed a seismic shift in how people were travelling. The baby boomers were cashed up and wanted their adventures spiced with creature comforts. “These were the people who wouldn’t dream of walking into a Paddy Pallins,” Lars told me. “They weren’t interested in tents and sleeping bags. They wanted gadgets and lightweight, fast-drying underpants, so we decided to create a shop for them.”
Making its debut in Hastings Street, Noosa in 2005 (where it still resides), the Lightweight Traveller brand was an instant success with retail outlets in three states, and able to withstand the battering the travel industry took during Covid.
Sadly Lars didn’t fare as well. His health may have been failing quickly, but during the months of each year the couple spent in Noosa, nothing would prevent him motoring his Luggie across the street to the riverside park to hold court as the sun lowered and share wisdom and old jokes, delivered in a thick Swedish accent that grew less decipherable with age.
After watching the live-streamed celebration last week, we neighbours and friends repaired to Lars’s spot by the river and raised a glass in his honour. I’ll always remember him so happy in that place, as I will every time I slip into my gifted lightweight, fast-drying undies.
Rest in peace, Lars.
